


lavender blue

by sousuke



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 22:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2000451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sousuke/pseuds/sousuke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakurai has an anxiety attack and Teppei is a dorky boyfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lavender blue

The bath had lost its warmth some time ago; he thought it poetic that he should stay immersed in it regardless, as if it mirrored his life almost perfectly. How long had it been now since the water had been pleasant, he wondered. The room was silent save for the occasional splash of a droplet falling from the faucet, which dripped at sporadic intervals and was steadily luring Sakurai to the brink of insanity. Perhaps he should grant himself some mercy and just get out, but for some inexplicable reason, the thought frightened him; he couldn’t escape the embrace of the water for as long as he compared it to the misery of his life.

Jaw clenching, Sakurai squeezed his eyes shut and bit back sobs. He remembered a time when he had been a regular child, brimming with spirit and mischief, but these memories felt so distant and sweet that he had come to recall them as if they were simply romantic dreams he had thought up as a means of soothing himself. After his father abandoned his family when Sakurai had just barely approached adolescence, his mother quickly spiraled into the throes of despair, and in an emotional attempt at making sense of what had happened, she started to openly blame their only child as the cause.

He could feel his anxiety stirring angrily in his chest, coiling around his heart and creeping up towards his throat. It felt something like a snake trying to suffocate him from inside his own body. As his panic slowly grew, it became increasingly more difficult to hold back his whimpers and sounds of pained restraint; every inhale was too long and every exhale was too short, and the nothing in between was suspended for a few seconds, then a few more, and then more still, until he found himself holding his breath.

Unable to force out the air in his lungs, Sakurai clasped both hands over his mouth, eyes closed so tightly that it was a wonder how his tears even managed to find a way out, and yet still they trailed down either side of his face and collected on the underside of his jaw before falling into the bath below. He tucked his legs close to his chest and curled around himself, burying his face and hands into his knees. It felt like he was drowning in air.

Sakurai was no stranger to panic attacks, but even still his mind raced through familiar fears of dying — what if his lungs had stopped functioning, or if the stress on his pounding heart caused it to seize? What if he passes out from all the oxygen to his head; he could drown if he slips under the water. Through the wheezing of his breaths and the volume of his thoughts, Sakurai didn’t hear the bathroom door open, nor did he see the broad figure of his boyfriend crouch down beside the tub.

Teppei took the younger boy by his shoulders and gave him a gentle shake; Sakurai exhaled sharply, eyes opening wide in surprise. He was saying something, but it mostly sounded muffled, like his ears were submerged in the water. An arm wove under his own and held his side in a clumsy embrace — awkward with the edge of the bath between them — and a hand buried its fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. Sakurai wasn’t sure how many minutes or hours or days passed with them like that; it might have been a week, even. Time had an odd way of flowing around him.

When the attack died down and his breaths slowed, Sakurai became dully aware that he had been lifted onto his knees and was hugging himself tightly against Teppei’s chest. The other’s shirt was wet from his body, and a small slick patch of saliva near where Sakurai’s mouth was sent a pang of shame through his core. “S-So-Sorry,” he moaned weakly, exhausted from hyperventilating. Teppei relaxed his arms — which were circled around the nervous Touou student and had been supporting him since his legs didn’t have the will to — and eased him back to a sitting position.

He didn’t ask Sakurai if he was okay, nor did he tell him he’d be alright; Teppei let one hand trail down to his bare waist and used to other to cup the side of his tear-stained face, and he simply smiled. It was a goofy kind of smile. Sakurai’s gaze, which up until now had been fixated on looking anywhere except at Teppei’s eyes, quickly became absorbed in his comforting grin.

“If your dilly, dilly heart feels a dilly, dilly way,” Teppei sang softly in a deep voice. Sakurai’s expression twitched as if in anticipation of not knowing how to respond. “And if you’ll answer yes.” He tried to look down, but Teppei tilted his head back up and brought their faces together. “In a pretty little church, on a dilly, dilly day,” he continued; there was a slight laugh between some of the words, making Sakurai’s lips curve and part for an airy chuckle of his own.

Separating for a moment, Teppei leaned over to yank out the plug from the drain, grunting as he did so, then he twisted the handles for the tap to fill it up again and purred, “You’ll be wed in a dilly, dilly dress of …”  
“Kiyoshi …” Sakurai wiped his face with the back of his hand, sniffling loudly. His heart sank; how pathetic was he that he’d be such a burden on his lover that they'd need to soothe him with a children’s song. “I’m sorry! You can go; this must make you uncomfortable …”  
“Lavender blue, dilly, dilly —” Teppei wasn’t going to stop, it seemed “— lavender green.”

Sakurai felt his cheeks grow warm as the other male took off his shirt and tossed it aside. He hastily averted his gaze when the pants followed suit, and suddenly became painfully aware that he himself had been naked this entire time. It wasn’t the first time they’d exposed themselves to each other, but he could just imagine how he must have looked when Teppei came to investigate the sound. Sakurai had just started to frown when a pair of legs slid around him on either side, and as he felt Teppei’s warm chest against his cold back, he instead thought he might die of bliss. What he had done to ever receive this kind of kindness, he would never know.

“Then I’ll be king, dilly, dilly,” Teppei murmured in a singsong voice, the side of his mouth pressed to Sakurai’s ear. Sakurai turned to face him, tears welling in his large brown eyes. The water was warm again now.

“And you’ll be my queen.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is pretty old but i wanted to post something here haha ;w;


End file.
